The Big Apple, a-la Berenice Abbott

Berenice Abbott (July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991), was an American photographer best known for her black and white photography of New York City architecture and urban design of the 1930's.

Abbott went to Europe in 1921, spending two years studying sculpture in Paris and Berlin. She first became involved with photography in 1923, when Man Ray, looking for somebody who knew nothing about photography and thus would do as he said, hired her as a darkroom assistant at his portrait studio in Montparnasse. Later she would write: "I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else."